Reading Hebrew

This morning, your host attended services at his synagogue, as he is prone to do on Saturdays. As has been the case on a number of occasions, he read aloud part of the weekly Torah reading from the scrolls used for that purpose. It then occurred to him that, because of some of the facts about how the reading is done, it might be interesting to discuss in the blog.

Each week, Jews read a passage from the 5 Books of Moses (Torah), as well as an additional reading from the prophets (Haftarah). Over the course of one or three years, depending on the denomination, all 5 books are completed; the other readings are the same every year. However, despite being part of the same canonical literature, the way in which they are learned and read is very different.

Both readings are in Hebrew, and employ the same alphabet. They also employ the same musical notation (called "tropes") to instruct the reader. The meaning of the tropes varies according to both the type of book and the occasion being read. Perhaps more important to the reader, however, is the difference in what is present on the page to be read.

All of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet represent consonants. The vowels, and some additional information about syllable structure, are written as diacritics above or (mostly) below the letters. In the scrolls, all of the vowels and musical notation are omitted. SC is not aware of any other religious tradition which imposes this difficulty on the reader, although he expects no sympathy from readers of pictographic alphabets.

In order to accomodate readers in learning their parts, books known as "tikkun" are available, which place the fully-specified Hebrew in a column on the right-hand side, and the scroll text in a column on the left. An example of this can be seen here. The general learning strategy, therefore, is to memorize the vowels and tropes, and to hope that you don't bungle it too badly during the service. Note that the same sequence of consonants may be associated with a different set of vowels and tropes in each instance (this is probably too difficult to see in the link provided, though). In order to assist the reader, one or more people stand at his (or her, in non-Orthodox synagogues) side, and repeat the words if a mistake is made, so that it may be corrected. Unlike the reader, they have the advantage of the fully written-out form in front of them.

Although both of the readings are kept in scroll form, only the Torah reading is normally accomplished through that method, because it is broken up into 8 smaller readings (usually 3-5 lines apiece), which are not often all read by the same person. The Haftarah readings can be substantially longer, and in order to assure the participation of more than one or two members of the community, are generally not read from a scroll, so that the larger pool of people who are at least familiar with the tropes can be drawn on.

However, this weekend involved a special Torah reading, with a single passage of 22 lines to be read from the scroll. There are more than a few weekends where the other 7 readings add up to that much. It was your host's singular fortune to be honored by getting a call requesting his help in doing this late last week. While SC is not conversant in Biblical Hebrew, he has some modest gifts in rote memorization, and so was able to complete the task largely successfully.

As a matter of scientific interest, his pulse at rest this morning was approximately 75 beats per minute. Measured again one minute before beginning the reading, it was approximately 140 beats per minute.

Comments

[Hans Georg Lundahl]

Seen examples where alternative readings of consonants were possible?